Aba aba Fish

Summary: What’s an Aba aba? It’s our next unknown creature! Join Kiersten as she introduces us to the Aba aba fish.

 

For my hearing impaired followers, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean

 

Show Notes: “Gymnarchus niloticus” Global Biodiversity Information Facility, https://www.gbif.org

“Gymnarchus niloticus, Aba aba” Seriously Fish, https://www.seriouslyfish.com

“Morphology of Aba Knife Fish (Gymnarchus niloticus) (Cuvier, 1829)”, by S.O. Ayoola and C. E. Abotti. World Journal of Fish and Marine Sciences 2 (5): 354-356, 2010.

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

 

Aba aba Fish

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

 

Kiersten - Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… This is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

My name is Kiersten and I have a Master’s Degree in Animal Behavior and did my thesis on the breeding behavior of the Tri-colored bat. I was a zookeeper for many years and have worked with all sorts of animals from Aba Aba fish to tigers to ravens to domesticated dogs and so many more in between. Many of those years were spent in education programs and the most important lesson I learned was that the more information someone has about a particular animal the less they fear them. The less they fear them the more they crave information about them and before you know it you’ve become an advocate for that misunderstood animal.

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

Welcome back, listeners! In this new series after summer break, we will be heading back into the water. Don’t worry we will not need a bigger boat! Okay, I had to throw in a reference to Jaws, being that it’s fifty years old this year, and also one of the reasons that an entire generation of people fear sharks. But that is another series all together. 

This episode is the first in a new series about a fish. The Aba aba fish to be specific. Never heard of it? That’s exactly why I picked it as my next unknown creature. This first thing I like about the Aba aba fish, is the Aba aka fish. We will start off this series with an overview of this wicked cool fish to whet your appetite to learn more.

The Aba aba fish, Gymnarchus niloticus, is also known as the African knife fish, Frankish, freshwater rat-tail, or aba fish. It is a long, slender bodied fish with only one fin. The dorsal fin runs from the back of the head to the tip of the tail on the top-side of the body. This is their only fin and the reason they are called knife fish because they kinda look like a knife if you used the head as the handle. 

Aba aba are typically black to gray to brown on the top half of the body while the underside is a paler color, such as white or beige. They are covered in very small scales that do not stand out making it look like they have smooth skin.

Adults can reach a length of five feet or 1.6 meters and weight 42 pounds or 19 kilograms. That’s a pretty big freshwater fish.

Classification of the Aba aba is as follows-

Kingdom: Animalia

Phylum: Chordata

Class: Actinopterygii (the ray-finned fish. These are fish that have lightly built fins made of webbings of skin supported by thin bony spines)

Order: Osteoglossiformes (this is an order of ray-finned fish known as the bony tongue fish and we will delve into to this in more detail in a future episode)

Family: Gymnarchidae 

Genus: Gym